Wait...what?!

[fireheart17]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/s...-1226658022295

So apparently a pedophile (who in this case is appearing on a child porn charge) has argued that he shouldn't be charged with child porn because all the images consisted of children:

a) clothed
b) unclothed but from the waist-up only (ie no t-shirts, bras, camis, singlets etc.)

Somehow that apparently doesn't constitute child porn...

[Kelmon]

I don't see the problem here. If the photos he downloaded are not child pornography (I don't know Australian law), there's no crime here.

It is perfectly legal to be turned on by children, as long as this does not lead to anything illegal (rape, statutory or otherwise, for example).

It should not matter if he has been previously convicted of something; if I am allowed to have clothed pictures of children on my PC (for example of my nieces and nephew), so should he.



Frankly, I pity the people that have to live with such a sexual disorder. I can't imagine how it would be for me if the kind of sex i want was illegal. (No, this is not saying that acting out on your pedophilia is by any means excusable).

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

If a 14 year old boy can buy or receive a Victoria's Secret catalog without Victoria's Secret facing charges, this guy can't be prosecuted.

I wouldn't mind a law that dictates mandatory counseling though such as "if you have X problem and are caught with a collection of pictures of children, the state requires an observation period and one month of counseling."

I'd be very leery any amendment to laws in which jail is a recourse for possessing a PG pic though. One, I think it would encourage full-blown child pornography since the law doesn't see the difference. And two, since society pretty sends the message we want these people in jail and not in therapy anyway, the only thing that causes the afflicted to not escalate is their own sense of morality and empathy. Empathy which admittedly they do not receive from anyone else. So add to that their "sliding scale" of reasons they can go to jail starts with being anywhere near a picture of a clothed child and I'd be afraid you're encouraging the actual act. Any possible slip is now illegal. I just think that's the kind of environment where you get, "well fuck it, I'll just go do the real thing" as a reaction.

[HYHYBT]

The other thing is, if you broaden the category of pictures that are illegal to own, nobody else can have them either. It leaves the door too far open to prosecute almost anything as if it were child pornography.

[Greenday]

a) clothed
b) unclothed but from the waist-up only (ie no t-shirts, bras, camis, singlets etc.)

Somehow that apparently doesn't constitute child porn...

Um, if they aren't having sex and they aren't exposing their private areas, that is most definitely not child porn.

[s_stabeler]

Um, I think it should be clarified here that the pctures were of boys. A topless picture of a girl could concivably be an issue.

the guy is definitely a pedophile though- I'd be uncomfortable having him aorund kids.

[Rapscallion]

Sort of torn here.

By any normal standard, he's not downloading images that anyone else would consider pornographic for themselves.

They are, assumedly, pornographic for him, and that is how he assumedly uses them.

The law doesn't take the latter fact into consideration, in a similar way that it would treat illegal possession of a gun in the UK the same whether you had in mind self-protection or armed robbery. For me, he has a solid legl argument on the face of it. I don't like what he's almost certainly doing with the images, but it doesn't sound illegal.

Unless there's a new offence on the statute books of 'previously convicted paedophiles owning pictures of children that wouldn't interest a non-paedophile sexually', then I'd have to say he's free. If he's done the time required for his proven crimes, he's free to act within the law. If you think that the law should be changed to make his crimes into a life sentence, well, that's a debate worth having and one that I think we've touched on before.

Rapscallion

[Kelmon]

The reason for child pornography being illegal is that children are hurt or at least exploited when making it. Not because of what people do with these pictures and videos. Which seems very sensible to me.

We should only punish sexual behavior if someone is (non-consensually) aversely affected by it, not because we find it icky, wrong or immoral. In this particular case, the latter seems to apply.

[Ginger Tea]

This is a grey area in a lot of ways as already pointed out, if the images are just jpg's from a clothing catalogue it's from a harmless source who were not out to market gap kids as spank bank withdrawals.

If however the children involve although clothed also feature in photo-shoots that are abusive in nature, then it is clear that the child is harmed in the making of even clothing catalogue images, just because he is fully clothe in the first 5 images, doesn't mean he is going to be that way on the next 10.

[fireheart17]

If however the children involve although clothed also feature in photo-shoots that are abusive in nature, then it is clear that the child is harmed in the making of even clothing catalogue images, just because he is fully clothe in the first 5 images, doesn't mean he is going to be that way on the next 10.

I suspect it's this one. Source would also matter (like a number of people have said, a catalogue would be harmless, but if he's getting them from a website that specialises in child porn...) as well as intent. I also can't help but wonder if conditions of his release/parole previously mentioned that he wasn't to use a computer.

[Kelmon]

If however the children involve although clothed also feature in photo-shoots that are abusive in nature, then it is clear that the child is harmed in the making of even clothing catalogue images, just because he is fully clothe in the first 5 images, doesn't mean he is going to be that way on the next 10.

I fully agree. Which is why i think just looking at the actual "clothing level" of the children depicted in pictures or videos is not the best way of deciding whether something should qualify as child pornography or not.

I'm pretty sure that you can, for example, easily find pictures of nude toddlers playing on the beach, and no-one in their right mind would classify those as child pornography.

[Hyena Dandy]

I think the law should be enforced as it's written. If the law doesn't actually forbid it...

I mean, it seems to me that... Yes, he probably is a pedophile. But he very well could be one who just has those desires. And he wants to find a way to indulge those desires WITHOUT contributing to the exploitation of children. So he finds what rules there are, and he avoids any actual child pornography, by downloading things that he can get off to without those things being overtly sexual.

And now he's being arrested because we know he was probably getting off to them. Well, yeah, he was. And there are, indeed, people who are pedophiles. And because of the idea that they should be arrested because of that... That contributes to why pedophiles who might WANT treatment never seek it.

Yeah, we don't know if whatever he does next will be child pornography. But we also shouldn't be able to arrest someone on the grounds of "Well, you probably WANT to see naked kids." We don't know if his next pics will be actually pornographic. So we should arrest him if they ARE. Not if they MIGHT be.